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<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2>Bill Poser wrote:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2>...A related situation that I have
encountered is one in which the basic form of a noun is normally understood as a
dual and there exists a singulative form that can be used if one wants to be
clear that one is referring to a single member of the pair. In Carrier this is
true of nouns that naturally come in pairs, such as "eye" and "hand". If you say
/sna/ it will normally be interpreted as "my eyes". If you are singling out one
eye, you say /snak'uz/ "my one eye", or "side of eye", if you like. The suffix
-k'uz is also used with single things that are considered as consisting of two
halves, e.g. a side of beef, or in Carrier culture more commonly, a side of
fish. (Treated as an inalienably possessed noun, -k'uz means "a half, a side",
and therefore 50 cents.)<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2>from David Frank:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2>What you reported for Carrier stirred
up in my memory something very similar in St. Lucian French Creole (though St.
Lucian is much less complex grammatically than Carrier). The word
<EM>soulyé</EM> means 'shoe' or 'shoes'. Most nouns can be unspecified in number
as long as the NP is not definite. So if you say, <EM>I volé soulyé mwen</EM>,
that could mean "He/she stole my shoe" or "He/she stole my shoes." The
number is not specified. If you attach a definite article to the noun, then
you have to specify singular or plural.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2>In our dictionary, we also have the
word <EM>koté</EM>. The first sense of that word is 'side' and the second is
'half of a pair (of shoes, socks, etc.)' The example sentence is <EM>An dansé-a
i té pwen yon koté soulyé tifi-a</EM></FONT><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"><FONT
size=2>, "At the danse he had taken one of the girl's shoes." In this context,
where the definite article is not attached to the word for "shoe," to make
it clear that only one of the girl's two shoes is being referred to, you
literally say, "he took one side [of the pair] of the girl's
shoes."</DIV>
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